Neatorama author and super nice gal Miss Cellania is having a bit of a computer problem:

My word processor takes fits. I will type a sentence (and I’m not the world’s fastest typist) and then sit back and wait while one by one the letters appear on the screen. It may take thirty seconds or so for my words to appear. No one can figure this out. No matter what browser I use, I cannot paste URLs into a link field at Blogger or Moveable Type. At Wordpress, I can paste in using rich text, but not html mode. I can at Squarespace in Foxfire versions 1.4 and 3, but not version 2. I can't have Safari ever again because I for some reason don't have Safari now. I always manage to come up with problems no one has heard of before.

I don't have a Mac, so I have no idea what's wrong. If it were a PC, I'd say a virus/malware, but isn't Mac supposed to be resistant to that kind of shenanigans? Anyhoo, if any of you could help her, we'd appreciate it: Link (or you can email her at radiofox AT gmail DOT com)

Anyhow to put this to rest, she doesn't have any virus or maleware that is making her machine do these things. Yes, if it was a Windows box I would have thought the same thing.

I would take it to an Apple specialist and have them run a hardware test on it. If it has a hardware failure then Apple usually does a decent job of replacing it. I know when my old G3 tower's firewire ports stopped working and it was out of Warranty, Apple went ahead and replaced the board for a $50 cost. (Basically shipping)

"Kevin: There is malware for OSX. and has been for a long time. Full stop."

You didn't read what I said. I said yes, they have found vulnerabilities.But this hasn't effected ONE Mac user yet. And no, it hasn't been a long time, and it's nowhere near the amount Windows has. And this has something to do with market share, AND something to do with Windows being more insecure than the Mac OS

"I am working with them (not only), and with loads of them, so i pretty much know what i am doing most of the time"

You are working with them what? Be specific when you write.

" and saying that there is an operating system for which there is no malware is just bollocks. there is malware for unix, linux, osx and windows. and lots of windows malware because so many people use it."

The maleware problem Windows has has to do with it's usage AND MSs crappy coding and "no care" policy on such things. As Gates has said himself. I have never seen CRAP about OS X maleware. Why isn't there any removers for such things for OS X then? Where are they at?

"Other, less known OSes are way less secure than even XP or 98 (oh and there are big fat reasons for which I dont think that vista is a good OS just yet) but since no one uses it, there is just little malware, and the stuff that does exist, is mainly there for testing purposes."

Again, I said that it didn't exist in the public. No one had been bit by it. I didn't say it didn't exist at all.

No OS X computer has been infected by it. And you can say that is because it has small numbers, but that would be dishonest. Because back in the classic days there were viruses that got around and spread with a even smaller user base.

Yes, one of the reasons Windows DOES get viruses more often is because it's the one used the most. But that isn't the only reason. That's not even the main reason.

It sounds like this could be a number of things, but I'll take a stab at it.

The OSX filesystem is not the best as was so recently and not so subtly pointed out by Linux Torvalds, and it sounds like that might be the problem... especially since you say re-installing Safari with Pacifist fixed it. I'd recommend at least running Tech Tool Pro or Disk Warrior on your drive before you go with a reformat. Heck, even give the bundled Disk Utility a go before you shell out for those utilities, it just isn't as thorough.